


Hope for the Hopeless

by the2fast2u



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, One-Sided Attraction, Other Relationships to Be Added - Freeform, but like, one sided attraction for kaneki, other characters to be added - Freeform, they just deserve to be happy okay?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-03-19 04:55:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3597114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the2fast2u/pseuds/the2fast2u
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Touka and Hide gloom about their loved one being missing and realize what an awesome person had been in front of them the entire time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It had been months since that horrible day. It had been months since I had since that clumsy smile and that innocent look in his eyes. Anteiku wasn’t the same. It was duller, and even more boring. Nishio had become a real pain in the ass and the only reason I hadn’t kicked him to death was because he always brought the Kaneki-wouldn’t-approve-of-this card. I knew he was true, and I would love for him to grab my arm or shoulder every time I felt like showing him exactly what I felt towards him. But he wasn’t there. In fact, I had no idea where the fuck he was. For all I knew, he wasn’t even in the same country anymore, let alone in the same district.

But I had to go on with my life. As much as it hurt, I had a life before him and I needed to have one now that he had left. It wasn’t like he wasn’t gonna come back ever again…or at least that’s what I kept telling myself. He was somewhere out there – he simple had to. After making me train him and after everything we had gone through, he couldn’t not be somewhere. So I went to visit Kamii University. I already knew I wanted to become a biologist, and, maybe, if I studied at the same place he had, I’d find some kind of clue as to where he had gone, what he had done. It might’ve been wishful thinking, borderline irrational, but I just had to try.

The university was really big, like excessively big. Honestly, who needed tables that big? Do university students really spend their time having lunch together and sharing notes? For all I’ve seen from Nishio, if you managed to get 1 or 2 good classmates who took good notes, you had to consider yourself more than lucky. And what’s with the 2 libraries? At school, we were lucky if a _third_ of the library was being used at the same time, so why the fuck would you need 2 gigantic libraries? And it was all super spacious. Like, really, I was starting to thank whoever was up there for having me all trained up for running, because otherwise I would never be able to go from one class to another and actually make it in time. It was tiring just walking around and I was already exhausted from thinking about having to walk this much every single day for the next 6 years or so.

I was walking to get something to drink when I saw the posters. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen them before because, once I saw the first one, I looked around and saw a lot of them posted on every wall of every floor. There he was. Giving that shy and clumsy smile he always showed when somebody asked him for a picture. His name and some phone number were placed right under his picture and I had to fight back a couple of tears. I raised my hand and touched that ebony hair I could remember so well and couldn’t help thinking how it wasn’t right – his hair was softer, much softer than this. He didn’t look right in one of those posters. Those posters were for other people – people who were different…somehow. But, just not him.

I was pulling back my hand when I was startled by some loud shouting.

“Okay! Let’s put one here,” he said. He didn’t notice me and kept talking to another person with him. After a minute or so, he noted me and stopped at once. “Huh?” He looked about as confused as me. “Touka-chan?”

“Oh…Hi…Nagechika-san…” The air around us was awkward to say the least. I had never talked to him besides the usual greeting and his order in Anteiku. He was always at the coffee shop, but we had never talked – he had never talked to anybody besides Kaneki and Nishio, really, so I didn’t know what to say right now.

“It’s been a while since we last saw each other, huh?”

“Yeah. Ever since…” I couldn’t finish that sentence, but there was no need for me to do so, really – we both knew what I was talking about.

“Yeah. It’s been hard to go there.”

It was quiet for a minute or so and the awkwardness of the whole thing kept getting worse by the second. I didn’t even know where to look at or what to do with my hands or anything. Things had been tiring throughout the entire day, but this was the most energy-consuming thing I had to do. Just as I was turning to leave, I felt a hand gripping mine and forcing me to stay in place.

“Wait!” He said clearly louder than he intended to. “Wait, just…I need to talk to you. Can you…? I’ll get us some coffee – not as good as the ones you make, I can only offer machine-coffee, but…can we please talk for a moment?”

I was about to say no and leave, but then I saw the look in his eyes. It was bordering the lines of desperation and I could only sympathize with him. I knew he missed him just as much as I did, if not more, and I was probably the only connection he had to him right now. Well, I mean, he always had Anteiku, but I could understand how hard going to the place where he worked was – it had taken me a while to do the same thing, after all.

“Fine, I’ll go to one of the tables over there. Not like I have to work today or anything.”

He looked at me like he couldn’t believe what I was saying and smiled the biggest smile I had seen in my life before letting go of my hand and dashing to the nearest coffee machine. I stayed there, standing, without thinking about anything in particular; just staring at the place Nagechika had just been standing. I slapped myself and tried to put myself together before heading for the tables and sitting down.

“Sorry for the wait, Touka-chan,” he said as soon as he got back with two big cups of coffee. Not that he had taken too long. In fact, I don’t think it took him 5 minutes to go get the coffee and come back.

I thanked him and he sat down. We stayed in silence for a while, just sitting there, watching our coffees get cold. I didn’t know what to say, even though I knew there was a lot to talk about.

“I never thought I’d meet you here, Touka-chan,” he said, probably more to break the ice than because he honestly cared about me being there.

“Yeah, I’m going to enroll in Kamii, so I came to look around.”

“Is that so…” he said.

I didn’t know what he had expected me to say, but he clearly had no idea how to keep that course of conversation going. Of course I knew what he wanted to talk about, but I had no idea how to bring it up, and it didn’t look like he had much more of a clue than I did, so we just went back to staring at our coffees in silence.

“Hey, um…” we both said at the same time. I apologized, but he let me speak first.

“Kaneki-san still hasn’t been found, has he?” Not that I had to ask – not even we, at Anteiku, knew anything about Kaneki, but it just felt like a good way to start the conversation.

“That’s right,” he said after sighing. I could sympathize with him, but seeing the loud, sometimes over-energetic person who was a regular at Anteiku sound so down didn’t look right, not one bit. A part of me hoped that he, being Kaneki’s best friend, would know something about his whereabouts, but I guess that was just wishful thinking.

“It’d be great if they found him quickly,” I said, more to myself than to him.

After that, I asked Nagechika-san to tell me a bit more about Kaneki – even if he was a ghoul now, Nagechika-san was still closer to him than I would ever be, so I figured knowing more about him and his past would help me understand him and, maybe, I could figure out just where he had gone. But, as he started talking about Kaneki, I realized something I should have figured out a long time ago, because now that I had, everything seemed so obvious: the reason he was always at Anteiku, the reason he was always asking for study sessions, the reason he had called him so many times when he had been transitioning and refusing to go to class. It had always been there, but I had always turned a blind eye because I hadn’t wanted to face the reality: I wasn’t the only one who had feelings that went beyond friendship and partnership. He had always been there to help him, ever since they had been little kids. Who the hell was I to say I knew what Nagechika was feeling? I couldn’t even come close to that.

And that was why I had to say something. I may have no idea what bottling up those emotions for years felt like, but I knew that that look on his face had to be whipped away as soon as possible.

“I don’t know if he’s well or not,” I said standing up before I even knew what I was doing, “but he’s definitely still somewhere reading a book or something, isn’t he?” He looked up to me in surprise and I can’t say I blamed him. I had no idea what I was talking about, for all we knew, Kaneki could have been found and killed by the CCG, or maybe he was being tortured and analyzed by them, but I had to push all those thoughts to the back of my mind so that I could convince the person sitting in front of me that Kaneki was still alive and well. “S-so he’s definitely okay, right?” He laughed softly and pulled on his hat a little bit.

“I wonder if you know about that, Touka-chan…”

“Huh?”

“That guy has one mannerism.”

“Mannerism?” What the hell was he talking about?

“Yeap. When he’s hiding something, he touches his chin like this,” he said, showing me. “This is a secret of Kaneki,” he whispered right in front of my face. Then he pulled back and flashed another smile. “Well…if he comes back to the shop, then you can make him spit out everything that he’s hiding!”

He got up and left the university after that. Jesus, where had the sulking guy gone? Not that I preferred him to the happy one that had replace him, but it amazed me how much he had changed in a matter of minutes. I stayed there for a couple of minutes, simply replaying that conversation in my head. I had been nice to know more about Kaneki, but somehow finding out about Nagechika’s true feelings was a bit discouraging. I sighed and checked the time on my phone and figured out it was about time I headed back home so that nobody started getting worried. Boy, had this been one hell of a day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry to whoever is actually following this because I have no excuse to why I took this long to update except that I have some future parts of the story super planned out and I haven't even thought about what happens before. So, yeah, that's why it took me this long to update.  
> Anyway, here's the chapter. Hope you enjoy it.

It was just another day. I was working at Anteiku like any other day. I was smiling whenever some new customer came through the door and whenever someone waved goodbye at me. I was preparing coffees almost on auto-pilot, without giving any order much thought. Whenever things calmed down a little bit, I hid myself behind the coffee machines and picked my books and studied until something needed to be done. The manager had told me that I could take a couple days off if I needed to study, but I was doing fairly well in the practice exams Yoriko had been giving me, so I decided to help out at the shop. After all, this was everything I could do to pay back for everything he had done for me, so I tried my best to not take days off.

I was busting my brains trying to understand some stupid Math problem that I couldn’t understand why I actually needed this to get into university if I wasn’t even gonna be studying something related to Math when I felt somebody leaning over the counter. I would’ve raised my head from my book and welcomed the customer, but I was on my break and stupid Nishiki was supposed to greet whoever came during the following 15 minutes. So I ignored whoever was leaning waiting for someone to take their order and tried to focus on the stupid problem in front of me. But Nishiki just wasn’t showing up and I started to feel the pressure of having a pair of eyes set on me and it was driving me crazy!

“Hey there, Touka-chan!”

I jumped slightly at that. What the hell was he doing here? Didn’t he say he couldn’t come in here? That it reminded him of Kaneki or some shit like that? So why was he here, smiling and talking like absolutely nothing happened? More importantly, why was he talking to me when I was on my break?

I closed my book, put it on the table and walked up to him, trying to put on my best smile – the manager wouldn’t like for any of us to upset any customer, whether human or ghoul.

“Hello, Nagachika-san. Welcome to Anteiku.”

“Ah, there’s no need to be so stiff, Touka-chan,” he said with that smile of his. Did he ever stop smiling? God, what am I thinking? Of course he didn’t smile all the time – I saw that first-hand just over a week ago. Not like it was something I wanted to see it again anytime soon. “You don’t have to be so formal. Just act like you did before.”

“We…we didn’t talk before, Nagachika-san.”

And just like that, the smile faded from his face, even from his eyes. It’s like he just realized this and never even question it.

“Ah, I…I guess you’re right. Whenever I was here…guess I always talked to Kaneki, huh?” There was some attempt of a smile trying to form as he said this, but it wasn’t the honest, happy smile that was usually on his face.

“…Yeah. Whenever you were here, you only ever talked to him…” This was awkward and it was only getting worse by the second. We simply stared at our hands for a while without making a sound. I had to do something, say something, but I had no idea what and it didn’t look like he had much of a clue, either.

“I, uh…I’m gonna go to that table over there. Got some stuff from college, so…yeah…”

And with that, he pushed himself up from the counter and walked to the table by the window. I stared at him for a while. He was no better than I was after all. He tried so hard to pull out that smile and look like everything was back to normal, when in reality he was just as bad as I was.

“You should take a break,” I heard somebody say behind me. I turned around and didn’t hesitate to protest.

“But, manager, I…”

“Go take some coffee and give yourselves a couple of minutes. You both need it.”

I wanted to complain once again, but the look he gave me told me I had no say in this matter: I was gonna take a break and sit with Nagachika-san whether I wanted to or not. I sighed and went to prepare myself a black coffee and have Nagachika’s cappuccino ready. I was putting the cups on a tray when I looked up and saw Nagachika. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before – maybe it was the lightning, or maybe I just hadn’t paid attention – but he looked a lot paler and thinner than usual. I stayed still for a couple of seconds, thinking about what to do. I turned around and saw the fridge where we kept some basic ham & cheese sandwiches and then looked back at him. I turned a couple of times before Nishio came my way.

“Oh, for the love of…” He opened the door and started putting some sandwiches on a plate. “We’re already giving him coffee, might as well feed him. Doesn’t look like he’s doing it himself, does it?” I stared at him. Was he…was he actually _caring_ about Nagachika-san? “What?” He stared back when he noticed me. “Kaneki’s sure to come back and he’ll kill us if he knows we left his precious human friend starve to death. You sure made him strong and that’ll bite us right in the ass if we don’t take care of that guy.” He said putting the plate full of sandwiches on my tray.

“Th…Thank you, Nishio.”

I picked up the tray and made my way to the table by the window. Nagachika jumped a little when I set the things on the table and sat on the chair opposite him.

“I was given a break and you look like you need some company,” I barely whispered and put the cappuccino in front of him and the sandwiches in the middle, but closer to his side.

“Uh…thank you.” He smiled once again. It wasn’t the fake one he had given me before but it wasn’t his usual happy-go-lucky one either. “I didn’t think it’d be this hard.”

“Wanna talk about it?” I offered, though I didn’t think I’d be much help, either.

“Not really,” he half-coughed, half-laughed before taking a sip of his drink. “How’d you know I had a cappuccino?” He sounded surprised.

“You used to come all the time before Kaneki started working here and I’d normally take your order.” His smile widened at my answer. “It’s nothing special, really. I remember the orders of all the regulars.” Why did I feel the need to clarify it? It wasn’t a lie, anyway: I did remember the orders of every single regular.

“Well, whatever the reason: thanks.”

It was quiet after that, but it wasn’t awkward like before. This quiet was comfortable, almost warm. We were just sitting there, taking small sips of our drinks, having some sandwiches – him more than me for obvious reasons – and doing nothing else, saying nothing at all. I had never felt this way with anybody: not with Yoriko, not with my family, not with the people who worked here at Anteiku.

“So, tell me a little bit about yourself, Touka-chan.” And with that, the comfortable silence was broken.

“About myself? I don’t really think there’s much to tell, really.”

“Oh, come on, there’s gotta be something.” He tilted his head to the side and grabbed his chin as if in deep thought. “Well, you said you wanted to get into Kamii, didn’t you?”

“Well…yeah…” Although there wasn’t much point in it at the moment.

“Well…?” He looked at me, as if he was expecting me to say something.

“What? That’s everything to it. I’m graduating and I have to choose a university.”

“Oh, come on, there’s gotta be more to it than just that!” Was he a five-year-old? I had just told him precisely the opposite. “Come on, you have to give me something else. Let’s see…what will you study?”

“Biology…”

“Seriously? Wow, that’s so cool! I listen on the TV all these things about medicine and anatomy and ghouls and humans and I really wish I could understand it, but I’m not that good at that…Well, I’m not really good at anything really, but that’s another story,” and then he gave a small laugh that was getting really close to the usual one.

“You got into Kamii, didn’t you? I’d say you’re pretty smart.”

“Not really, I had to cram everything that was on the text books for the entrance exams and I just barely passed.” He scratched the back of his head and looked to the side. “I was the last one on the accepted list, so 1 more wrong answer and I would’ve been left out.”

“Still, you got in. I’m not sure I will. Not with the scores I’m getting on my practice tests, anyway.” I took another sip of my coffee and looked down at the table.

We went back to being quiet. Looks like long conversations didn’t really work for us. Not like I was complaining – I enjoyed the silence, but somehow I felt like Nagachika wasn’t a quiet person, so seeing him like that bothered me for some reason. I was busting my brains thinking about what I could bring to the conversation, but I couldn’t come up with anything no matter how hard I thought. I knew I didn’t have to bring Kaneki to the conversation, but I didn’t know what else there was for us to talk about. That was our one and only connection after all. A bang at the table brought me back from my thoughts.

“I get it!” Nagachika said with the biggest smile I had seen him with during this afternoon. “I’ll help you with your studying!” He said as if he had solved the world’s hardest puzzle.

“Huh?”

“Yeah, I’ll help you out. You were studying behind the coffee machines before, right? You looked like you needed some help, and what better tutor than a guy who actually got into Kamii, right?”

“But you just said that you barely got in.” I couldn’t for the love of God understand this guy’s train of thought.

“Yeah, I know, _but_ I did get in, and I know exactly how the tests feel like, so I could help you out with that. And, besides, how hard can it really be?” He smiled. He actually fucking smiled. How could he fucking smile?

“Are you serious?” I couldn’t believe this was happening. “I have a friend that’s helping me out already, so…”

“Oh. Oh, well…if you need help with anything, don’t hesitate to ask, okay?” He looked at the clock on the wall and jumped to his feet. “Shit, I’m gonna be late for work.” He went to grab his wallet and I stopped him.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s on the house.”

“Really? Thanks! I promise I’ll pay for your coffee next time.” And with that, he left. Wait. Did he…did he just say…“next time”?


	3. Chapter 3

It was 6am when the alarm went off. I stretched my arm and turned it off before I decided to throw it out the window. I curled to my side for a while. I could always just sleep in, right? I mean, the manager had told me I could always take it easy while I was preparing my entrance exams…no, I couldn’t…I had already told him I’d keep working as always, so I had to get off and get ready to work. As soon as the blankets left my body, however, I started doubting my intentions. It may not have been as cold as I was feeling, but staying up until 2am to work on the sample tests Yoriko had given me might not have been a good decision.

I put my work uniform on, grabbed my brush and looked in the mirror. Thank God I worked on a coffee shop – I was really gonna need that free caffeine I could afford. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to punch past-me for not taking up on the offer to get some sort of paid vacation so I could study and get a precious extra hour of sleep every day.

I sighed and put everything in my bag. I grabbed and checked my phone and groaned. _Of course_ there was some class homework I had completely forgotten about and I’d have to do at Anteiku during those rare morning moments where there weren’t any customers to take care of. Maybe if I hurried to get there, I’d manage to have everything ready before I had to open and get some of the homework done. Maybe not, but it’s not like I had anything else to do in my room and if I thought about it for just one minute, I’d stay in bed and leave Nishiki to deal with morning rush all by himself. I’d never be able to pay off that favor, so I grabbed my bag, locked the door behind me and left for work. This was gonna be a very long day, I was sure of it.

 

As soon as I got to Anteiku, I left the bag behind the counter and began preparing everything. I was preparing the sandwiches when Nishiki came through the door.

“Wow, you sure got here early today. What happened? Stayed up all night waiting for the idiot to come back?” He said as he tied the apron behind his back.

“Very funny, Nishiki.” I yawned. “I was up working on some stupid sample tests Yoriko gave me.”

“As long as you don’t fall asleep on the sandwiches and make me do them all over again by myself, I don’t really care.”

We set everything in silence after that and were done 20 minutes before we had to open, so I grabbed my Math notebook and got started. When I opened it and saw the amount of exercises we were supposed to have done by today, I started panicking. There was no way I was gonna be able to finish this while working considering my state of mind, but I had to at least try to do as many as possible.

I was on my third equation when I thought back to my little conversation with Nishiki. I hadn’t stayed up waiting that, against all odds, Kaneki would knock on my door or my window and tell me that he had come back for good and he’d get back to work at Anteiku and everything would be just like before. I had even woken up startled because I had dreamed that had happened only to find my empty room and nobody behind the door or window.

But I hadn’t even thought about him lately. When had it started, really? I remember having bags under my eyes and not focusing on class for thinking about the possible scenarios of how our reencounter would be. I had thought about the place, the time, what each one of us would say…I had made up hundreds of different situations ever since he had left. But not anymore. I had been paying attention in class and while studying for the entrance exams. I may have been sleep deprived lately, but it wasn’t for that. I had been up late focused on my text books. I hadn’t even thought about Kaneki lately, and I couldn’t understand why. Why hadn’t I been thinking about him when that’s all that had been going through my mind until recently? When had it stopped? When had my mind started focusing on something else?

“-chan.”

Why hadn’t I been able to do this before?

“ka-chan.”

Why couldn’t I understand my brain?

“Touka-chan!” I heard someone yell while waving their hand in front of my face.

“Huh?” How long had I been in my own world? I looked up and saw that Nishiki had already turned the sign on the door from “closed” to “open” and that our first customer, Nagachika, was already standing in front of the counter. “Sorry about that, Nagachika-san.”

“It’s okay, don’t worry,” he said smiling. It was still too early for a person to be this happy and energetic. Showing that much brightness before 9am should be illegal. “Having trouble with something?” He was leaning against the counter and I was about to push him back when he grabbed my notebook and started analyzing the exercises I had been trying to do. “Hm…this isn’t too hard. I can help you out if you want to.”

“I…I don’t really need help. It’s not like I’m bad at Math, I just haven’t slept much today, so I’m a little tired.”

“What? You haven’t been sleeping? That’s not good, Touka-chan. You won’t do well in your exams if you don’t sleep enough.”

I took my notebook from him and put it behind the counter before I started working on the coffee machine.

“Cappuccino, right?” I asked without turning to look at him, although it was pretty useless since I had started working on it without waiting for his answer.

“I still think I could help you with school stuff…” he was leaning over the counter with a slight pout on his face. I turned my back on him so I could pay full attention to the order I was preparing. I set his cappuccino on the counter and took his money. “Keep the change.” He said smiling, before heading for the door.

“You gave me twice as much.” He must have made a mistake. A little tip was almost expected from him, but this was way too much.

“Little sleep is no good. Use it to get yourself some coffee or maybe some sugar to keep you up during class. It would be useless to stay up all night studying and then sleep in the place where they actually explain all that stuff, wouldn’t it?”

I couldn’t even reply. Before I could even open my mouth to say anything, he was out the door.

 

The rest of the shift was fairly uneventful. Sure, we had our fair share of angry, hurried customers who couldn’t wait for even a minute for their order to be done, but that was norma. But that, added to my lack of patience and multiplied by my lack of sleep, made the shift longer than usual. When my shift was finally over, I took my apron as fast as I could, got my school stuff and rushed out the door.

When I entered the classroom, I met a very happy, maybe too energetic Yoriko asking if I had received her message on time and whether I had managed to do that and if I had any trouble with the sample tests she had given me…and I decided to tune her out a little bit and just sit down on my desk with my head on the desk. Man, I was too tired. How was I supposed to stay up during the entire class? Nagachika was right, there was no use staying up in front of my texts if I was gonna sleep in class.

“Are you feeling okay, Touka? You look kinda pale...” I looked up and tried to put on a smile.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Just a little tired.”

“The samples I gave you were too long, weren’t they? I knew it! You don’t have to push yourself, Touka.” What? No!

“No, no, it’s okay. I really want to get into Kamii, so this is the least I can do.”

She looked like she wanted to answer back to that, but the bell rang so she had to go to her seat. I sighed from relief and took my notebook out of my bag. I opened it where my copies with the homework were and the first thing I noticed was that there was some writing in red ink on the bottom of the page.

“Call me if you need anything. Here’s my number. Hide.”

“Touka? Are you okay?” Yoriko said from behind me as I laid my head on the desk once again.

“Yeah, just tired,” I lied through my teeth without raising my head one bit. There was no way in hell I was letting her see the note or my face.


	4. Chapter 4

I stared at my phone for what felt the thousandth time. I knew I could always pick it up and simply send one short text, but doing so would be admitting defeat. I could do this on my own. It wasn’t that hard, anyway. So what if I had been stuck in the same problem for over an hour? So what if I hadn’t taken a break in three hours? So what if I had more coffee than human flesh in my body? So what if I was two seconds away from pulling my hair so bad I’d need to wear a wig for years until it grew back?

I looked out the window. Maybe I just needed a break. Taking a short walk couldn’t be that bad, could it? What was the worst that could happen? Fresh air may do me good. I sighed and stretched my back before staring at the sheet of paper that was sitting on my desk as if it were mocking me for not being able to solve a fucking problem. If this didn’t change, there was no way I was getting into Kamii. Fuck this, I needed a break. I put a pencil and my books in a bag and headed out the door – maybe I’d think of a way to solve this while I was outside and I wasn’t gonna risk forgetting about it before I made it back home.

It was cold outside. It probably shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did – it was winter, after all – but I had been spending so much time either locked up in my room or at school that I was forgetting about checking the temperature before going outside. I started walking towards the park and hoped it would help me keep warm. There were more and more people walking around as I got closer to the park. People walking fast, children running around with their parents chasing them around, students holding their cups of coffee for dear life…I stopped at the corner waiting for the light to change and I looked at the store on the other side of the street. It was decorated with lights and there were people going out with bags with ribbons and wrapped boxes. I guess we were getting close to Christmas. I should’ve brought my wallet; I still hadn’t bought the gifts to exchange at Anteiku…

I was so lost in thought and didn’t realize the light had gone green until some guy was pushing me. I crossed the street and went back to thinking about Christmas. Us ghouls never really knew when we would die, so we always celebrated every holiday to our heart’s content. Most of us didn’t have many relatives, if any, and not all of us were in a relationship, so we normally celebrated together. Nishiki would probably spend it with his girlfriend, but the rest of us were gonna meet in Anteiku, exchanging gifts and having coffee and not much else.

“Huh? Touka-chan?” I heard somebody call me behind me. I turned around and saw him. Did he have to appear everywhere I went? “Christmas shopping?”

I found it hard to find my words. There was something different in him. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there definitely was something.

“…No, no. I…uh…I was just…” I couldn’t simply tell him I was having trouble with my school work. “I…thought I’d take a break for studying and I ended up here.” That wasn’t completely a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. He didn’t have to know that, anyway.

“Oh, right. I’m on a break from studying, but I guess you still have to, right?” There was definitely something different in the way he was acting. I was finding it hard to focus in what he was saying and what I had to reply with. I had to find out just what was different, but no matter how hard I thought about it, I couldn’t figure it out.

“Yeah, I’m still not good enough. In fact…” I stop myself from saying anything more, but it was already too late. I tried to keep my mouth shut, but the way he was looking at me pushed the words out of my mouth before I could find a way to stop them. “I…if you’re not too busy…I would very much appreciate if you’d help me with some stuff, Nagachika-san…” I looked at the floor. Was I really doing this? I had promised myself I’d do this without asking him for help. Yoriko was more than enough. I had been getting better lately without his help, so why was I crumbling now?

“Huh? You need help? But you said you were doing so well the last time we talked…” I was about to punch him for that, but when I looked up, I couldn’t see the sarcasm I was expecting. Instead, there was nothing but pure care and…and something else. God dammit, I needed to figure out just what it was that was different so that it stopped distracting me.

“Yeah, well, I thought I was doing better, but that clearly isn’t the case anymore, so…You don’t have to help me if you don’t want to, I’ll understand if you have something else to do, so I’ll just-”

“Sure. Let’s just go to that café over there so that we can warm ourselves up and get to work work,” he said flashing one of those smiles of his and I wasn’t sure if I needed to get a coffee to warm myself up.

I followed him in silence, looking at him as he talked about some boring class he had been taking last semester and how much he hated that teacher and all that time I couldn’t stop trying to pinpoint exactly what it was that was different. He stood a little bit taller. Maybe he was finally starting to recover from the loss of his best friend. He was smiling more often, too. That was good. Gloomy didn’t suit him.

But there was something else. There was something in his eyes. Something that hadn’t been there the last time we had talked. There was something sad that contrasted awfully with his beautiful smile and that sing-song way of speaking when he was excited about something.

We entered the café, got our coffees and sat down at one of the big tables at the back, one of the ones meant for big study groups, even though we were the only students sitting there.

“So, what’s causing the smart Touka-chan to be so desperate to finally accept my help?” He said taking a sip of his drink before slamming it to the table. “Dammit, that was too hot,” he said and I almost smiled as I picked my bag and looked for my Math sample tests.

“There’s this problem with equations that I just…I can’t seem to get it right no matter how many times I try.” He stared at it for a while and then grabbed my notebook to see what I had been doing. I never erased what I did, even if it was wrong – Yoriko had yelled at me more than once for doing that when I was doing things well and half-way down the problem I did something wrong and had to redo everything from scratch and that made us lose time. He turned back and forth for a while. I stared at the way he looked through the problem with his brows tight in concentration. After a couple of minutes, he smiled and looked up.

“You’re not far from it, Touka-chan.” He pushed the notebook to my side and grabbed a pencil. “See, all you did wrong was this,” he circled the middle of the original equation. “You simply messed up the signs. You were doing it all right and then when you had to go back for the second part you got confused and so it never came quite right.” He crossed out what was wrong and handed me the pencil. “Now, you do it right. It’d be useless if I did everything for you, wouldn’t it.”

I took the pencil from his hand and looked back and my notebook. I couldn’t have done a stupid mistake like that. Scratch that. There was absolutely no way I spent an hour or so staring at the page I had in front of me and not realizing that I had made such a stupid basic mistake. But, as I went along the equation, I realized that yes, I had in fact made the most basic mistake I could have ever made in Math. I couldn’t help the blush of embarrassment that was appearing in my cheeks.

“T-thanks for that, Nagachika-san.” It was barely a whisper. One would call that mumbling instead of speaking, but that was all my pride was allowing me to do.

“Don’t even mention it, Touka-chan. I didn’t really do much. If you had looked at it for 5 minutes after taking a break you would’ve gotten it right on your own. You’re probably just stressed out, but I can’t say you’re not smart enough to get into Kamii on your own.” How could he say something like that with a straight face? I could feel the heat spreading to my face so I went back to staring at my notebook and kept my hands busy with my coffee cup. I had to get out of here as soon as possible, but no matter how much my mind thought that, my body would simply not move. “Do you need help in anything else? Now that I’m here, we might as well help you as much as I can, right?”

I wanted to shake my head. To put my stuff in my bag and tell him that no, I did not need his help. I wanted to do that from the bottom of my heart, but what came out of my mouth was a simple “sure, do you know anything about biology?”

He looked surprise and taken aback for a second, but he collected himself easily and scratched the back of his head while grinning. “That’s not really my area of expertise, but I guess I could try to help. Do you have your books here?” I pulled the copies I always kept with me in case I had some free time to study and laid them on the table. “Okay, then, just give me a minute so I can go through them quickly and then I’ll be with you.”

He skimmed through the pages faster than I had seen anybody do in my life. Was he really reading them? Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to ask him for help in Biology, but there wasn’t really a polite way to say “sorry, I changed my mind. I guess I’ll go study this in the beautiful desk that’s in my bedroom,” so I stayed silent and drank my coffee until he finished. Once he was done, I told him what were the parts that I didn’t quite understand and he explained everything so clearly I was starting to wonder if he really knew as little about biology as he claimed. After some hours of intense studying, he laid back on his chair.

“Man, I hadn’t studied this much in a while. I had forgotten how hard entrance exams were.” He looked up at the ceiling and his stomach grumbled. “Ugh, I guess my body is in need of some extra energy after that. I’ll go get a sandwich or something. Want anything, Touka-chan?”

“No, thanks, Nagachika-san.” He frowned at my answer.

“Come on, there’s no way you don’t want another coffee after all this intense studying. Black, right?”

He left before I could say anything. When he came back, he left the cup in front of me, sat down and ate his sandwich. I was so grateful about the fact that he wasn’t making me eat any human food that I didn’t even question it. Once he was done, he stretched his arms above his head and got up.

“My shift starts in some 45 minutes, so I should get going.” He stood up and I followed him. We were almost at the door when he suddenly stopped and turned around. “Ah, I almost forgot. Touka-chan, do you have any plans for next Friday?”

“Next Friday? I don’t think so, why?”

“Wanna go to the movies? There’s this movie everybody at my job’s been talking about and I thought I’d give it a try…” he sounded…almost…nervous.

“Sure. I guess some break from all the studying could do me some good.” If I thought his smiles were bright, the one he flashed at that moment could put the Sun to shame.

“Cool, I’ll text you to ask for your address and I’ll pick you at 4pm,” he said and left the coffee shop waving at me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah. I'm back from the dead. Considered dropping this a couple of times because I simply couldn't find any source of inspiration, but a friend of mine sorta forced me to keep on writing this...I guess I'll start updating more often cause I have it sorta planned from this point on.

**Author's Note:**

> This just started as a joke with exia-art.tumblr.com about how Touka and Hide were pretty much sulking about their loved one being gone and we thought what would happen if they realized that an awesome person had been in front of them the whole time. Eventually my mind started giving me feels about this shipso I ended up writing it.  
> Hope you'll like this!  
> Kudos are much appreciated, as well as comments, either here or on my tumblr the2fast2u.tumblr.com


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